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It is not an easy task to write an article. I’m not talking about writing an article just to see your name in the article section? I’m talking about trying to write articles that might succeed in generating a reaction from the readers. Sometimes, people submit stuff just to see their name more often when they search their nick on Google? That’s a bad thing. At least, it is unless you’re a genius or a very good writer. I am frustrated. The reason is not because of bad articles? I haven’t read much bad articles on Starmen.net, the staffers have done a good job filtering the section, I think. The reason of my frustration is looking at my computer screen without knowing what to write about. I guess I’ll write an article about writing articles.

The site article collection is about to hit a thousand entries. That’s a huge number. Almost a hundred of these entries (97 to be more precise) were sent for the second edition of the Essay Contest, wow! The problem with having such a big article library is that there are not a lot of subject left. That is the laziest excuse I could produce to explain the subject selecting problem I faced recently. There’s an infinite number of possibility to exploit? I could talk about a character, I could compare two characters, I could talk about a city, I could compare two cities, etc. The problem I really face is not the subject selection. What is it then? Its simple. I’m afraid to write a bad article. I recently wrote a huge article that I shall never submit. I won’t submit it because I keep on babbling on and on about myself. It made me think: ?Am I that narcissistic?? I don’t think so? But at least, I am a bit narcissistic (like every single human being on this planet).

Anyway, I wrote this article to talk about what I think that a good article should have in it. I’m no authority, just a guy who enjoys reading and writing articles. A good article is one that will give the reader a smile or will leave him thinking. The smile one is the easiest to achieve for people with a good sense of humor. The master of this kind of articles is, in my opinion, SimonBob. Every time I read one of his articles, I end up with a stupid smile on my face. I’m not going to develop a lot about this category. I suck at being funny so I shouldn’t try to help people write funny articles.

I like to analyze the second category: the one that makes me think. I spend time trying to find what I liked about it. A few things stood out of my analysis.

The first factor is style. Writing very short sentences like ?I like my dog. My name is Skip. Skip likes peanut butter.? is good for school essays if you don’t want to make too many mistakes? Here, you’re allowed to be a bit more risky and test your abilities to make longer and more stylistic sentences. Of course, if your article is FULL of mistakes (about one per line), There’s a good chance that people won’t like your article very much. The second factor is originality. You don’t need to have the most original subject to make an original article. You can write about a subject as overused as ?who is Ness? dad?? If you can bring the subject in a different way than everybody else, it might be a pretty good article. If you have an original subject, its even better! There’s also one more thing that makes me like an article: When it teaches me new things. You can add a paragraph explaining a philosophical theory or explaining how something works if its related to your subject. If your explanation is good and gives more insightful look on the topic: Bingo!

In conclusion, I want to say that this is only my opinion. Perhaps there will be some people who will disagree with the content of this article. If so, That’s a good thing because it will be an occasion to expand my theory of what a good article is.